Zócalo Public SquarePrizes – Zócalo Public Squarehttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org
Ideas Journalism With a Head and a HeartTue, 14 Aug 2018 07:01:41 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.5Zócalo Public Square Book Prizehttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/07/18/zocalo-public-square-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/07/18/zocalo-public-square-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/#respondWed, 18 Jul 2018 19:00:02 +0000zocaloadminhttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/?p=64455The Zócalo Public Square Book Prize is awarded annually to the U.S.-published nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion.

Consistent with our mission, the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize seeks to honor the best contemporary thinking on the oldest of human dilemmas: how best to live and work together.

Because community is such a vast subject that can be explored in myriad ways, we accept submissions on a broad array of topics and themes from many fields and disciplines.

But, as with everything else we feature, we are most on the lookout for that rare combination of brilliance and clarity, excellence and accessibility.

The author of the winning book will receive $5,000 and deliver a lecture at the award ceremony in spring 2019.

Our past winners are Michael Ignatieff for The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in

]]>The Zócalo Public Square Book Prize is awarded annually to the U.S.-published nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion.

Consistent with our mission, the Zócalo Public Square Book Prize seeks to honor the best contemporary thinking on the oldest of human dilemmas: how best to live and work together.

Because community is such a vast subject that can be explored in myriad ways, we accept submissions on a broad array of topics and themes from many fields and disciplines.

But, as with everything else we feature, we are most on the lookout for that rare combination of brilliance and clarity, excellence and accessibility.

The author of the winning book will receive $5,000 and deliver a lecture at the award ceremony in spring 2019.

Our past winners are Michael Ignatieff for The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World (2018), Mitchell Duneier for Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea (2017), Sherry Turkle for Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (2016), Danielle Allen for Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality (2015), Ethan Zuckerman for Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (2014), Jonathan Haidt for The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2013), Richard Sennett for Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation (2012), and Peter Lovenheim for In the Neighborhood: The Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time (2011).

]]>http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/07/18/zocalo-public-square-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/feed/0Historian and Political Philosopher Michael Ignatieff Wins the Eighth Annual Zócalo Book Prizehttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/04/03/historian-political-philosopher-michael-ignatieff-wins-eighth-annual-zocalo-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/04/03/historian-political-philosopher-michael-ignatieff-wins-eighth-annual-zocalo-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/#respondTue, 03 Apr 2018 07:01:53 +0000zocalohttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/?p=92716Michael Ignatieff—president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and writer, most recently of The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World—is the winner of the eighth annual Zócalo Book Prize.

The prize is given to the nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community, human connectedness, and social cohesion. Ignatieff is a prominent public intellectual who has held positions at some of North America’s and Europe’s most well-regarded institutions, including Oxford, Harvard, the Canadian Parliament, and the BBC. Yet his book finds glue for our fractured world in what he calls the ordinary virtues: trust, honesty, politeness, forbearance, and respect.

“His premise is so basic and so brilliant that it wholeheartedly embodies the Zócalo Book Prize,” explained one of our judges. “His observation of the forces and virtues that allow us to live side by

]]>Michael Ignatieff—president and rector of the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, former leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and writer, most recently of The Ordinary Virtues: Moral Order in a Divided World—is the winner of the eighth annual Zócalo Book Prize.

The prize is given to the nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community, human connectedness, and social cohesion. Ignatieff is a prominent public intellectual who has held positions at some of North America’s and Europe’s most well-regarded institutions, including Oxford, Harvard, the Canadian Parliament, and the BBC. Yet his book finds glue for our fractured world in what he calls the ordinary virtues: trust, honesty, politeness, forbearance, and respect.

“His premise is so basic and so brilliant that it wholeheartedly embodies the Zócalo Book Prize,” explained one of our judges. “His observation of the forces and virtues that allow us to live side by side, and the hierarchy of our morality and treatment of others, gave me a deeper understanding of intrinsic human virtues and how they transcend religion and geography to help people live their lives.”

Another judge was drawn to the book’s optimism, calling The Ordinary Virtues “a very insightful examination into how, as humans, we manage to work outside of ourselves, with virtue.” Indeed, Ignatieff shows us that while “the institutional structures of a society are important, it is individual virtues that can help heal a divided world.”

Ignatieff came to this conclusion over the course of three years of travel to eight countries, from Brazil and Bosnia to South Africa and Myanmar. He focused on communities that had undergone different stresses amid globalization, including nuclear disaster in Fukushima, corruption and poverty in Rio de Janeiro, and riots and gang violence in Los Angeles. In each of these places, he asked the same question he’ll be addressing at the eighth annual Zócalo Book Prize Lecture: “Are Ordinary Virtues More Powerful Than Universal Values?”

Ignatieff will deliver the lecture and accept the prize, which includes a $5,000 award, on May 22 at the National Center for the Preservation Democracy in downtown Los Angeles. Please see more details on the award ceremony here.

We asked him to tell us more about these virtues and how they play out both in communities and in conjunction with universal values:

Q: Your book is called The Ordinary Virtues. What are these, and how did you see them at work in places like South Africa and Brazil?

A: Ordinary virtues are that limited trust where you have a set of expectations about how interactions with strangers are going to go. You nod and say hi. You go into a store, you buy your stuff, you nod, you talk to people. There’s a micro-world of trust and transaction that communities depend on.

In South Africa, I was looking at virtues at work where people have almost nothing. I was visiting illegal settlements where….they have no cops; they have no water; they have no light. They get no services from the South African government. It’s as if they had been cast out onto a desert island.

But out of the 700 or 800 people in this illegal settlement, they produce a kind of moral order. The front yards are swept clean. There’s a little waffle fence separating each person off from the next person. Yes, there is crime. Yes, there is victimization. But life is made just tolerable because people reproduce a certain kind of basic order.

In this case, it’s assisted by a Christian charity that has plugged in right at the base of the community.

In Brazil, I went to a favela perched on the hillsides above Rio that has been there for about 70 years and is home to a couple of thousand people. They had a different story: Drug gangs had controlled the community and dictated what order there was. When the police seized back control of the community, the policing began to be done right. And that enabled people in the community to reproduce their own kind of order.

So the favela I saw was a case where a new form of policing had been put in place which was non-abusive and sympathetic to the community. And I was able to study what a positive effect that had on the people to display the ordinary virtues of trust. Trusting your neighbor, leaving your kids with your neighbor, leaving your door unlocked, asking someone to look after your mother while you stepped out for a minute to get your groceries. Grocery shopping for each other. All the little stuff that happens in the neighborhood becomes possible because you have a semi-decent policing system there.

So it is a study about the relationship between good institutions and virtue.

Q: What did you learn from the cities you traveled to?

A: Cities are not just freeways and economic systems. They have a moral operating system. There have got to be some very basic moral assumptions about the behavior of others that you can take for granted and not even think about. That’s the moral operating system, and when it gets broken, societies look into the abyss, and they have to walk back, and they have to rewrite the code.

Los Angeles is a fascinating place in terms of community and community repair after trauma (the riots of the 1960s and Rodney King in the 1990s). It’s a community of communities, people struggling to make sure the moral operating system works well enough so that the place moves forward, not backward. I learned a tremendous amount on my visit there.

I learned a lot about what tears communities apart. It’s not just inequality. It’s not just racism. It’s not just disadvantage or poverty. It’s a sense of outrage that your basic moral expectations have been violated. The police failed in L.A. during the Rodney King period. Racialized violence broke the civic contract in a second.

Q: What is it that we need to study to understand how this dynamic works?

A: We need to see the moral dimension of what makes cities cohere and thrive as communities. We need to think of the city not as a top-down structure but as a vast network of moral interaction and moral leadership, and we need to do everything we can to strengthen those networks. What stitches people together is not human rights talk or a new language. It’s limited provisional relationships of trust between civic leaders such that when bad things happen, they can make a call to calm things down on the other side, conditional on them cooling it down on their side.

It’s not high-falutin’; it’s not, “Let’s all sit around the table and sing kumbaya.” It’s, “If we don’t stop this we will damage a fabric that we all need.” It’s the mutual interest in avoiding disaster. It’s working together so our interests converge. I put a lot of emphasis on leadership, on strengthening networks. The mayor can’t do it, the business leaders can’t do it, the philanthropists can’t do it. You have to get right down into communities and networks and build this thing from the ground up. Everyone needs to be plugged into the network, and when you have that, you have something that’s resilient and something that can adapt in times of crisis.

Q: In your book, you contrast ordinary virtues with universal values. What use, if any, are universal values like human rights in healing our society right now?

A: In 1945, the white portion of the human race thought they were born to rule people of different skin color, and in 2018, we’ve come a long way from there because the basic recognition of human universality has battened down a lot of doors. I’m here to tell of how far we have come, a positive story. But I don’t know in 2018 how we’re going to reduce divisions in our society by saying we’re all human beings.

We need to agree to disagree about a lot of things and find a narrow bunch of things we have to agree about, like decent schools for our kids and basic rule of law and honest cops—some basic infrastructure. Let’s go back to basics together. Not everything needs to divide us politically. Not everything has a red label on it or a blue label on it. There are just some basics everyone needs in order to do everything. If you have a very polarized society, even fights ought to have rules. And then there’s some unwritten rules, and I think the unwritten rules are very, very important.

Q: You mention that there is a cheerful inconsistency in the ordinary virtues. Could you explain that? And is it a good thing or a bad thing?

A: Well, I think cheerful inconsistency is the nature of all our moral lives. Moral consistency is a virtue that only philosophers get to practice. I’m a liberal so I preach tolerance and yet I end up being suspicious and wary of all kinds of people. That is not very consistent. And it’s also not very cheerful.

Sometimes, cheerful inconsistency is when you have some idea that you believe and then you have an experience that contradicts your principles. And you end up learning. The cheerful inconsistency is the moment when you can understand the difference between what you believe ought to be true and what actually turns out to be true. And the cheerful part is that we’re learning something new.

We struggle for consistency, but most of us are barely able to think what consistency would mean because our moral lives depend on the circumstance, on the person in front of us.

Q: Are there any virtues under threat by larger institutions or trends that you’re particularly worried about?

A: Trust is the one. The limited trust that we need to have democracy work is in a lot of trouble. Electing somebody to go to Washington, for instance. Our capacity to trust these men and women has been eroded by 40 to 50 years. But you can’t run a democracy without trusting representatives to some extent. The way we get that back is a matter of good behavior: You get one good representative doing their job, being accountable, and not saying one thing while doing another. It’s performative, this stuff. There’s no way to give some big message to the world about how you restore trust.

Trust is that when a senator goes to Washington, she does her damn job. By showing people that she’s doing her best in a difficult situation, she reproduces trust. I’ve been an elected representative so I know how hard this stuff is. And there are no general lessons at work. You have to show up to the meetings in the community. You have to remember people’s birthdays. And if you say you’re going to vote for something you damn well vote for something. If you can’t vote for something you then have to explain that to people. Trust is performative in that way. And our democracy depends on people being willing to do that.

Q: What lesson do you hope people might take from this book?

A: We need to treasure ordinary virtue and the moral operating systems that bind strangers together, and we need to do everything we can to understand how these moral operating systems work. We need to understand how they sustain communities. We need to look unflinchingly at what happens when they break down, and we need to understand what we do to repair them.

Zócalo thanks this year’s panel of judges: Smithsonian National Museum of American History director John Gray, Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands chief administrative officer Rebecca Ávila, Princeton’s Duneier, Japanese American National Museum president and CEO Ann Burroughs, and Arizona State University strategic partnerships director Dulce Vasquez.

]]>http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/04/03/historian-political-philosopher-michael-ignatieff-wins-eighth-annual-zocalo-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/feed/0Charles Jensen Wins Zócalo’s Seventh Annual Poetry Prizehttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/04/03/charles-jensen-wins-zocalos-seventh-annual-poetry-prize/inquiries/prizes/
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/04/03/charles-jensen-wins-zocalos-seventh-annual-poetry-prize/inquiries/prizes/#respondTue, 03 Apr 2018 07:01:49 +0000zocalohttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/?p=92746Zócalo Public Square’s daily ideas journalism and free public events aim to connect people and ideas, exploring our shared human condition and the world we’ve made. In that spirit, we publish a new poem each Friday. And for the last seven years, we’ve awarded a prize to the poem that best evokes a connection to place.

This year, 441 poets submitted a record total of 1,145 poems, transporting us to physical locations near and fear, as well as to imagined worlds and mental states found on no atlas.

Ultimately, Zócalo poetry editor Colette LaBouff and the editorial staff chose to honor a poem that evokes the complex relationship between the natural and human-made environs of Tucson, Arizona: cloud-brushed mountain peaks, a coyote’s plaintive wail, and a baby quail “nested beneath the aluminum carport.”

]]>Zócalo Public Square’s daily ideas journalism and free public events aim to connect people and ideas, exploring our shared human condition and the world we’ve made. In that spirit, we publish a new poem each Friday. And for the last seven years, we’ve awarded a prize to the poem that best evokes a connection to place.

This year, 441 poets submitted a record total of 1,145 poems, transporting us to physical locations near and fear, as well as to imagined worlds and mental states found on no atlas.

Ultimately, Zócalo poetry editor Colette LaBouff and the editorial staff chose to honor a poem that evokes the complex relationship between the natural and human-made environs of Tucson, Arizona: cloud-brushed mountain peaks, a coyote’s plaintive wail, and a baby quail “nested beneath the aluminum carport.”

We’re thrilled to award the $500 Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize to Charles Jensen, a Wisconsin native who once lived in Tucson and now makes his home in Los Angeles. He will deliver a public reading of his poem at Zócalo’s annual Book Prize award ceremony on May 22 at the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy in Los Angeles. Please see more details on the public reading here.

Jensen is program director of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and the author of six chapbooks of poems including Breakup/Breakdown and Story Problems. A new collection, Nanopedia, will be published by Tinderbox Editions in summer 2018.

His Zócalo Poetry Prize-winning poem is below, followed by a brief interview.

Tucson

Dark clouds pull themselves,
hands first, over the peaks.

A snake leaves a warning
in furious cursive on the trail.

The drooping arms of acacia
have lost something precious
and cannot be consoled.

Further out, a coyote
chokes up a wail so thin it scratches
against windows like a fingernail.

The baby quail nested
beneath the aluminum carport,

a false sky

they can’t see through. They wait
and wait for rain but it never
falls. They never see the sun

but they must know it exists—
surely they trust one or two
unseeable things about the world.

***

We spoke with Jensen about his Midwestern rural upbringing, what turned him on to poetry, and his prize-winning poem, “Tucson.”

Q: You’re from Wisconsin originally. Whereabouts?

A: I grew up in a rural area between Madison and Milwaukee, in a town called Eagle that had 1,000 people. It was 10 miles between my town and the next town and it was also surrounded by a state forest. I guess that there was a lot of nature around me, but I never knew that that was a thing, because it was normal. And I always loved going to the city because it was so exotic and interesting and exciting.

Q: It’s interesting what you say about nature not seeming unusual to you. Your poem deals with our relationship to nature—how as humans we sort of write our way into nature through language, through metaphor. But nature also is able to express itself through its own kind of poetry.

A: What I discovered in writing the poem—and I don’t know that I had this in mind when I started—is that the poem starts out with images of desert life. But those images are personified: the clouds have hands, and the snake is writing cursive, and then the tree has arms, and it’s feeling a sense of loss. But then the quail—there’s a spiritual connotation for them because they can’t see the sky. And so I think the poem is asking, ‘Do animals care about heaven? And should they? Does not knowing about heaven make their existence any less meaningful?’ I think that’s where the poem is going.

Q: The quail have adapted to this man-made, unnatural world, and you write that, “they trust one or two/unseeable things about the world,” spiritual things.

A: Right. It’s the only point in the poem where humanity has inserted itself into the natural world, and like you say the animals have adapted to it. And that element of humanity is actually invisible to them as being unnatural. For them, that is the natural world: to have that aluminum carport be their shelter, but it’s also a thing that limits them.

Q: What’s your connection to Tucson?

A: Well, I lived in Phoenix for quite a few years and then I went to D.C., and after a few years there I moved to Tucson for about nine months—actually—before I moved to L.A. I lived in a remote part of the Tucson area called Catalina Foothills, at the base of the mountains. I love this landscape; I loved it since I was in Phoenix. But in Tucson it’s different. I had a friend who once told me that the difference between the two cities is that in Phoenix they pave the desert away—which I think is true—and in Tucson they welcome it right up to the front door, which is also very true. It was the first time that I felt that I really experienced the desert as like a neighbor. I once watched a Gila monster cross the road.

Q: How do you think your own migrations have influenced your sense of place?

A: Because my migrations have been so extreme—moving from the snowy Midwest to the scorching desert, for instance, and then from one coast to the other—I think the unfamiliarity of the landscape and climate become overwhelming. Though I love the desert now, when I first moved there it felt so stark. But the desert is alive with critters and plant life despite its extreme conditions. I remember when I moved to D.C. from Phoenix, it was July and it was 70 degrees with 100 percent humidity when I arrived. My body couldn’t deal—I was sweating and shivering. So place then is not only experienced geographically—it’s a physical and emotional experience as well.

Q: When and how did you start writing poetry?

A: I started writing poetry when I was 13. That year of my life I lived on Washington Island in Wisconsin, which is even smaller and more remote than where I grew up for the rest of my childhood. It’s off the ‘thumb’ of Wisconsin and it’s only 30 square miles. So I went there for a year, with 11 kids in my class; the whole school had 100 kids, K through 12. They had two artists come in and do residencies—one was a visual artist and the other one was a poet. So I had this amazing opportunity to have someone just be like, ‘Just try writing poems—because why not?’ And he was very encouraging. And what was weird—and I don’t know if I can even tell you why—I just never stopped.

Q: Were there particular poets or writers who inspired you?

A: The poet that I read most deeply, and where I first saw myself as a poet, was Frank O’Hara. And his poem “The Day Lady Died” was the first one I ever read by him. And of course that’s a poem that’s entirely about the urban experience, and everything is overwhelming, and all these things are happening, and I’m living my very fast-paced life, and then this moment happens and it causes me to stop. So in a way it’s really weird that that was where I sort of located myself as a poet.

]]>http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/04/03/charles-jensen-wins-zocalos-seventh-annual-poetry-prize/inquiries/prizes/feed/0Zócalo Public Square Is Accepting Entries for Its Seventh Annual Poetry Prizehttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/01/02/zocalo-public-square-is-accepting-entries-for-its-seventh-annual-poetry-prize/inquiries/prizes/
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/01/02/zocalo-public-square-is-accepting-entries-for-its-seventh-annual-poetry-prize/inquiries/prizes/#commentsTue, 02 Jan 2018 08:01:21 +0000zocalohttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/?p=68657Since 2012, the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize has been awarded annually to the U.S. poet whose poem best evokes a connection to place. “Place” may be interpreted by the poet as a place of historical, cultural, political, or personal importance; it may be a literal, imaginary, or metaphorical landscape.

Like everything else we feature, we are most on the lookout for that rare combination of brilliance and clarity, excellence, and accessibility. Please take a look at our winning entries from 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.

The winning poet in 2018, as judged by the Zócalo staff, will receive $500, a published interview, and deliver a public reading of the winning poem at our annual Book Prize award ceremony in Los Angeles.

The poetry prize competition is hosted in conjunction with our book prize, awarded to the nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community.

]]>Since 2012, the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize has been awarded annually to the U.S. poet whose poem best evokes a connection to place. “Place” may be interpreted by the poet as a place of historical, cultural, political, or personal importance; it may be a literal, imaginary, or metaphorical landscape.

Like everything else we feature, we are most on the lookout for that rare combination of brilliance and clarity, excellence, and accessibility. Please take a look at our winning entries from 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017.

The winning poet in 2018, as judged by the Zócalo staff, will receive $500, a published interview, and deliver a public reading of the winning poem at our annual Book Prize award ceremony in Los Angeles.

The poetry prize competition is hosted in conjunction with our book prize, awarded to the nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community.

Submission Guidelines

Eligibility

Poems must be original and previously unpublished work. Entries will be accepted until February 2, 2018.

Please attach poem(s) as a single Word document to your email. Include your name, address, phone number, and email address on each poem. Personal identification will be removed prior to judge’s review. We will accept online submissions only.

Judging

Entries will be judged based on originality of ideas, how well the poem fits the theme, and style. Judging is at the sole discretion of Zócalo Public Square. The winner will be announced in March 2018, and the winning poet will receive $500, a published interview, and deliver a public reading of the winning poem at our annual Book Prize award ceremony in Los Angeles. The winning poem will be published on zocalopublicsquare.org.

Conditions

The winning poem becomes the property of Zócalo Public Square. By entering the contest, the entrant grants Zócalo the right to publish and distribute his or her poem for media and publicity purposes, along with the poet’s name and photograph. The writer may republish the poem at a later date with Zócalo’s permission. Writers will be contacted by Zócalo before we publish any submission, either for the contest or on our site.

]]>http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2018/01/02/zocalo-public-square-is-accepting-entries-for-its-seventh-annual-poetry-prize/inquiries/prizes/feed/14Announcing Zócalo’s Sixth Annual Poetry Prize Winnerhttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/04/07/announcing-zocalos-sixth-annual-poetry-prize-winner/inquiries/prizes/
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/04/07/announcing-zocalos-sixth-annual-poetry-prize-winner/inquiries/prizes/#commentsFri, 07 Apr 2017 07:01:21 +0000zocalohttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/?p=84731Zócalo Public Square’s daily ideas journalism and free public events aim to shed light on critical issues that explore our shared human condition and ask questions about how we navigate the world we’ve made. We publish a new poem each Friday in the same spirit, and for the last six years, it’s why we’ve awarded a prize to the poem that best evokes a connection to place.

Matt Sumpter.

This year, 417 poets submitted a total of 979 poems, transporting us to the San Gabriel Valley, the Blue Ridge, and the Salton Sea to granite mountain ranges near Yosemite, Mexican deserts, and unnamed cities of the mind.

Ultimately, Zócalo poetry editor Colette LaBouff and the editorial staff chose to honor a poem that takes us on a journey, mediated by memory and technology, to an Ohio urban winter-scape from which events ripple out to touch people living many miles away.

]]>Zócalo Public Square’s daily ideas journalism and free public events aim to shed light on critical issues that explore our shared human condition and ask questions about how we navigate the world we’ve made. We publish a new poem each Friday in the same spirit, and for the last six years, it’s why we’ve awarded a prize to the poem that best evokes a connection to place.

Matt Sumpter.

This year, 417 poets submitted a total of 979 poems, transporting us to the San Gabriel Valley, the Blue Ridge, and the Salton Sea to granite mountain ranges near Yosemite, Mexican deserts, and unnamed cities of the mind.

Ultimately, Zócalo poetry editor Colette LaBouff and the editorial staff chose to honor a poem that takes us on a journey, mediated by memory and technology, to an Ohio urban winter-scape from which events ripple out to touch people living many miles away. We’re thrilled to award the $500 Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize to Matt Sumpter, a native Ohioan who now makes his home in New York City with his wife and young daughter.

But he told us he still considers himself a Midwesterner “by sentiment and heart as well as birth.” Sumpter also lived in Missouri, Montana, and Oregon while working as an AmeriCorps service member, and earned a masters of fine arts at Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at SUNY Binghamton, before relocating to Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighborhood.

His winning poem ranges over a terrain that’s both physical and conceptual, sensory and imaginary:

No World

There is no world without end, no morning
except this one in Ohio where ice
smoothes itself over ice, and neighborhood cats

hunch on hoods of idling cars. They live
outside by choice, warmed by the kindness
of wasted gas. My neighbor cracks his upstairs door,

inviting them to survive, but they ignore it,
shying from anything human skin has touched.
My neighbor, too old to go beyond the Walgreens

or the CVS, bikes each day for groceries
and wobbles home with plastic bags
hanging from the handlebars like streamers.

Sometimes he just circles around the lot,
whistling to the cats every couple passes.
No world exists without him

greeting them and saying goodbye
with one small sound. Inside, I watch footage
from a traffic cam in Cleveland:

a city park, gazebo, benches, a boy and girl
who blurrily glide past. Then they return
as a police car runs into the grass.

There is no world in which they both
walk home alive, hang up their coats,
and rush to the kitchen at the smell

of soup, forgetting to wipe their shoes.
There is no world where this is the final winter,
where every poem finally says I’m here with you.

There is no world without Verona,
Shakespeare wrote, meaningno world exists outside Verona,

meaning, sometimes, there is no other place
than this. We wake up early. We dress,
trying to believe there is no word for exile.

We spoke by phone with Sumpter about the inspiration for ‘No World’ and about why he became a poet.

Q: The speaker in your poem makes several references to Ohio, but seems to be physically somewhere else.

A: I grew up in Cincinnati, but I wrote this in Binghamton, in upstate New York. It was the middle of winter and there was like a foot of snow on the ground, when the sun is just this kind of urban legend that people vaguely refer to. So mood-wise, that’s a time for some sad nostalgia, maybe, or some reminiscence about other places and other times that are also a little lonely.

Q: The poem speaks about the idea of different, self-contained worlds. There’s the self-enclosed world of the television; the world of the TV cam; the world of Ohio; the world of wherever the poem’s speaker is; the world of winter, both as a landscape and as a state of mind; the world of possibility vs. the world of what actually happens; and the world of words—the world of the poem itself. What’s missing from this list?

A: You could include the Shakespearean world that’s mentioned in the poem, if you wanted to, I suppose. In the poem there’s basically two main scenes: There’s the neighbor, and there’s the lightly veiled recounting of the Tamir Rice shooting. And both of those incidents are worlds unto themselves, worlds that are perhaps more isolated from the speaker than some of the other worlds. Isolation is certainly a big theme within this poem. It’s not necessarily one that I set out to write about, but it’s certainly something that ended up being there by the time I was done with it. The things that the speaker is thinking about and interacting with are certainly more isolated conceptually, but at the same time, the speaker is reaching out to them and trying to make some connection with them. And that was something I wanted to keep in the poem, that within these moments of isolation there’s still this way in which they affect us and we can connect them, or they reach out and connect to us. We can’t really hide from them. The poem’s speaker is trying to navigate that boundary where he’s mediating between these worlds.

Q: Then there’s the word that ends your poem, “exile.” Did you feel you were in a kind of exile from your native state when you wrote this poem?

A: My wife and I were in different cities and we were commuting a lot. I think the isolation I felt at that time is an echo of exile, though it’s not as extreme. And I think that holds true for the poem as well. The exiles the speaker is witnessing are things that have happened to, or befallen, other people. But while isolation and exile certainly don’t feel good on a personal level, distance in general is useful for me as a writer. I think that being close to something is really useful in terms of experiencing it. But when you’re writing, a bit of distance sometimes is necessary. It may be a little reminiscent of the Wordsworth quote, “emotion recollected in tranquility.”

Q: How did you conceive the form of the poem?

A: Usually I start writing about something, whether it be an image or a sound or a metaphor or an idea or a situation that really sticks with me. And I’ll just keep writing and rewording it, until the first line or two seems to resemble poetry I wouldn’t be embarrassed by! And then I extrapolate from there: Does the poem go on in this way, or is there a turn in the poem that tweaks the form in some way—does the form change? And if it changes, is it going to be continually changing? Is it going to enter this dynamic, flux-y state where it’s a looser-form poem? Or is it going to maintain the current form, and is the content going to move and shift and be fluid within that form? This poem is closer to being a formal structure, because it’s pretty consistent tercets. But tercets have more instability than most regular structures. I think it worked for this poem, because a sense of incompleteness and unevenness was something this poem was trying to evoke emotionally.

Q: The poem frequently uses a short “a” sound—“cats,” “gas,” “cracks,” “plastic bags,” “passes,” “traffic jam.” These seemed to evoke the sound of cracking ice, or other sharp noises that can break through the muffled stillness of a snowy landscape.

A: Absolutely. Those short “a’s” have an abrasive feel to them. I think maybe one, by itself, would be a sort of puncture. But in larger quantities there is an abrasive feel to them, where something is being worn away, or shaken, or a placidness is being disturbed. The poem is sonically poking or jabbing at the silence around it.

Q: When did you start writing poetry, and why?

A: Reading “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 11th grade really got me started. That was the first time that I was struck by poetry as being something that was immediate and felt. It reached out to me in some different way. And, I thought, No. 1, that’s really great, and No. 2, I would like to do that also!

***

Zócalo has been awarding a poetry prize in conjunction with our annual book prize since 2012. Jody Zordrager won the inaugural prize for “Coming Back, It Comes Back,” a poem about returning home to Massachusetts. Our 2013 prize went to Jia-Rui Cook—prior to her joining the Zócalo staff as editor—for “Fault,” a poem about the shifting ground on which Southern Californians live. The 2014 prize went to Amy Glynn for “Shoreline,” about a place where we can sit back and watch the tide roll out and come in. Gillian Wegener won the 2015 prize for a poem that evoked the intimacy of a diner in a small town in the midst of change. And Matt Phillips won the 2016 prize for “Crossing Coronado Bridge,” which takes us on a journey across the span that connects the city of San Diego to Coronado Island, and explores our need to venture out into cold, black water—while recognizing there’s always a depth that is beyond our reach.

]]>http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/04/07/announcing-zocalos-sixth-annual-poetry-prize-winner/inquiries/prizes/feed/1Princeton Sociologist Mitchell Duneier Wins the 2017 Zócalo Book Prizehttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/31/princeton-sociologist-mitchell-duneier-wins-2017-zocalo-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/31/princeton-sociologist-mitchell-duneier-wins-2017-zocalo-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/#respondFri, 31 Mar 2017 07:01:19 +0000zocalohttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/?p=84607Mitchell Duneier, author of Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea and a sociologist at Princeton University, is the winner of the seventh annual Zócalo Book Prize. Duneier traces the ghetto from its 16th-century origins—when the Jews of Venice, Italy were forced to live in il ghetto—to Nazi Germany and America today. Duneier shows how the idea of the ghetto has become unmoored from its history, and how the work of 21st-century social scientists can shine a light on the ways we understand, misunderstand, and try to solve urban poverty and institutional racism. His dexterous storytelling and careful investigation provide much-needed perspective on one of the most persistent problems in American society, and inform our selection of Ghetto as the year’s nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion.

]]>Mitchell Duneier, author of Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea and a sociologist at Princeton University, is the winner of the seventh annual Zócalo Book Prize. Duneier traces the ghetto from its 16th-century origins—when the Jews of Venice, Italy were forced to live in il ghetto—to Nazi Germany and America today. Duneier shows how the idea of the ghetto has become unmoored from its history, and how the work of 21st-century social scientists can shine a light on the ways we understand, misunderstand, and try to solve urban poverty and institutional racism. His dexterous storytelling and careful investigation provide much-needed perspective on one of the most persistent problems in American society, and inform our selection of Ghetto as the year’s nonfiction book that most enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or undermine human connectedness and social cohesion.

In the wake of an election that has illustrated a sharp divergence between urban and rural America, and when the gap between wealthy and poor Americans grows ever wider, Ghetto is the kind of book we need about our nation’s divides: one that gives context without judgment and offers analysis in lieu of easy solutions. Our judges lauded Duneier for his scholarship and his ability to weave together many different voices, places, and threads. One wrote that Duneier “powerfully captures the voices of leading African American intellectuals who sought to understand the processes of segregation that have produced urban ghettos and the alternatives available to improve life in urban America. Ghetto doesn’t produce easy answers but it raises difficult and intractable questions about American society that need to be wrestled with still in 2017.” Another judge lauded the book for its “compelling stories of the sometimes forced cohesion of people, often by evil-doers, reinforcing existing communities and connectedness.”

Mitchell Duneier is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and the author of Slim’s Table: Race, Respectability, and Masculinity; Sidewalk, and other books. An ethnographer who works at the intersection of science and politics, he explains that he chooses his projects “with an eye to revealing both the common and distinctive elements of humanity.”

This is also at the heart of Zócalo’s mission and why we continue to recognize authors who investigate and celebrate how and where humans find common ground. Our Book Prize and our annual Poetry Prize both recognize those who search for and illuminate these places, be they geographical, ideological, or metaphorical.

As the winner of the Zócalo Book Prize, Duneier was awarded $5,000, which he generously donated back to Zócalo to be used in pursuit of our mission. Duneier will receive his award and deliver a lecture, titled “Will We Ever Eliminate Ghettos?” in Los Angeles on Friday, May 12. Please see more details on the event, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, here. In advance of his visit, we asked Duneier about his book and why we need it now.

Q: Why did you choose to use scholars and thinkers as your way into the story of the ghetto?

A: Social scientists have been enormously influential in our understanding of the U.S. ghetto, and likewise the very term, “ghetto,” embodies some of the most brilliant work in the history of the social sciences. I focus on scholars like Kenneth Clark, William Julius Wilson, Horace Cayton, St. Clair Drake, and Gunnar Myrdal. These were fascinating thinkers and people who showed what the ghetto meant for the times in which they lived. Much of their work is completely forgotten, or read outside of the historical context in which it was written.

Q: Why is the term, “ghetto,” and its history important in this particular moment?

A: In the U.S., the ghetto never fails to be central to manifestations of racism, whether contemporary or historic. In the social sciences, the word, “ghetto,” has long symbolized housing inequality and racial residential segregation. But the term and its long Jewish history also tells a story about the extremes of semi-flourishing and social control that can manifest under conditions of spatial restriction. Understanding the history of the Jewish ghettos highlights the urgent fact that black ghettos today are characterized by much more social control by outside forces than ever before, and less human flourishing. When you study the history of the Jewish ghetto from 16th century Venice though the Nazi era, these variations in both control and semi-flourishing come into bold relief.

Q: Your book doesn’t make recommendations about policy or give easy answers. But what one thing can America or Americans do right now, either at a government, community, or individual level, to fight urban poverty?

A: The book is an extended argument against a longstanding American tradition of seeing the ghetto as a problem with one-shot solutions or quick fixes. At different moments in its history, the country has become fixated on solutions like changing the black family, or fixing a supposedly ingrained culture of poverty, or improving urban education, or jobs, or racism. But ghettos are the intergenerational expression of a series of vicious cycles within the realms of education, work, family life, and violence—all feeding on one another in a spatial context. A reversal of these vicious cycles is unlikely unless the country radically changes its commitments to low taxation and massive investment in military spending. And even the results of such transformations would take generations to unfold. There are no quick fixes in the here and now.

Q: What do you think your book teaches us about social cohesiveness and human connection?

A: That there is much less of it in America than many whites would like to believe. Part of the book is an effort to trace the history of America’s conception of its own morality vis-à-vis the institution of the ghetto. There is a long tradition of influential thinkers arguing that the problems of the ghetto would take care of themselves because white Americans ultimately wanted to live up to the ideals enshrined in the constitution and the Bill of Rights. Other social scientists have been far more cynical, arguing that whites only act on behalf of others when it is expedient to do so.

]]>http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/03/31/princeton-sociologist-mitchell-duneier-wins-2017-zocalo-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/feed/0Announcing Zócalo’s Fifth Annual Poetry Prize Winnerhttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/04/14/announcing-zocalos-fifth-annual-poetry-prize-winner-2/inquiries/prizes/
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/04/14/announcing-zocalos-fifth-annual-poetry-prize-winner-2/inquiries/prizes/#commentsThu, 14 Apr 2016 07:01:38 +0000zocalohttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/?p=71935Zócalo’s daily ideas journalism and free public events aim to shed light on critical issues that explain our shared human condition and ask questions about how we navigate through the world we’ve made. We’re proud that we publish a new poem each Friday with the same spirit and that we’ve been able to award a prize for the last five years to the poem that best evokes a connection to place.

This year, a record 443 poets submitted 1,016 poems, taking us to streets in South Korea, markets in Ecuador, and the river that runs through Minneapolis. We received quite a few musings from the desert—perhaps one of the more beautiful after-effects of the prolonged drought still desiccating many parts of the West.

Ultimately, Zócalo poetry editor Colette LaBouff and the editorial staff chose to honor a poem that takes us on a journey across the bridge that connects the

]]>Zócalo’s daily ideas journalism and free public events aim to shed light on critical issues that explain our shared human condition and ask questions about how we navigate through the world we’ve made. We’re proud that we publish a new poem each Friday with the same spirit and that we’ve been able to award a prize for the last five years to the poem that best evokes a connection to place.

This year, a record 443 poets submitted 1,016 poems, taking us to streets in South Korea, markets in Ecuador, and the river that runs through Minneapolis. We received quite a few musings from the desert—perhaps one of the more beautiful after-effects of the prolonged drought still desiccating many parts of the West.

Ultimately, Zócalo poetry editor Colette LaBouff and the editorial staff chose to honor a poem that takes us on a journey across the bridge that connects the city of San Diego to Coronado Island. We’re thrilled to award the $500 Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize to Matt Phillips of San Diego, California. His winning poem explores our need to venture out into cold, black water—while recognizing there’s always a depth that is beyond our reach:

Crossing Coronado Bridge

He’s making ocean talk—says gnarly swells and stoked for summer, but I’m counting
retired sailboats anchored northwest: I invent names like A Total Catch, Love’s Revenge,
‘Bout Time, and I Win You Lose. His red Toyota rattles across road braille, catches
third gear, groans toward two hundred feet above black water.

I blink at signs every few car lengths: ‘Call the Suicide Hotline.’ Then we’re talking
shipwrecks off the coast, how to keep our bearings in the blackness of cold deep water—
tie a rope and unspool as you swim, follow the line back to its origin.

the Toyota sighs with easy descent. I guess there are California myths I should tell, legends
conjured from memory’s undertow. I know one that says a bearded man caught three stingrayswith chopped white squid (fleshy as a tulip), cut them loose

Zócalo spoke on the phone with our winner about the poem and the poet behind it:

Q. What inspired “Crossing Coronado Bridge”?

A. It was a combination of factors. I was reading a lot of poems that have to do with the city, everything from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” to William Carlos Williams’ Paterson. And I had been doing research on the Coronado Bridge here in San Diego. I was thinking about bridging the dichotomy of these two bodies of land and the deadliness of the bridge. And then randomly I took a trip with one of my buddies, Vin, a real estate agent, to go fish beneath the bridge. So this is basically the moment of crossing the bridge with him in his little Toyota and reflecting on the camaraderie of going fishing with a buddy, and the idea of the poet being a flâneur, someone who goes around a city and takes everything in.

Q. If you had to have one poet’s talent, whose would you like to have?

A. Jim Carroll. Jim was a New York-based poet for most of his life, and was a punk musician, too. His work was made famous in the movie The Basketball Diaries, with Leonardo DiCaprio. His book Fear of Dreaming has been with me since I was 12 or 13. It’s here on my coffee table, all taped up. He worked within tradition and expanded things and created his own forms.

Q. What’s your favorite place to write poetry?

A. I write at a desk I built from an old pallet, sitting in my and my wife’s bedroom. Or I write sitting on an easy chair in the living room. I worked as a reporter for a while—I had an internship at the Denver Post—so I learned to write anywhere, even with activity going on. I don’t need total silence. I like a little noise.

Q. What subject do you find yourself returning to?

A. The subject I return to most is the emotional and physical landscape of being Californian from childhood onward. Living here in San Diego and growing up in the Coachella Valley, it’s the border culture and working-class people. Being Californian is being able to hike in the mountains and surf and run in the desert all in one day if you want, and a confluence of multiple cultures. It also means understanding that not everyone has same views as you. And it’s language—the things Vin says.

Q. How do you make a living?

A. I’m a grad student now, getting my MFA at the University of Texas at El Paso. I’m currently writing my thesis. So partly on student loans—and I have a fellowship. I also work as an editor for an admissions consulting company part-time. I help people write medical school application essays.

***

Zócalo has been awarding a poetry prize in conjunction with our annual book prize since 2012. Jody Zordrager won the inaugural prize for “Coming Back, It Comes Back,” a poem about returning home to Massachusetts. Our 2013 prize went to Jia-Rui Cook—prior to her joining the Zócalo staff as editor—for “Fault,” a poem about the shifting ground on which Southern Californians live. The 2014 prize went to Amy Glynn for “Shoreline,” about a place where we can sit back and watch the tide roll out and come in. And Gillian Wegener won the 2015 prize for a poem that evoked the intimacy of a diner in a small town in the midst of change.

]]>http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/04/14/announcing-zocalos-fifth-annual-poetry-prize-winner-2/inquiries/prizes/feed/1MIT’s Sherry Turkle Wins Zócalo’s Sixth Annual Book Prizehttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/03/24/mits-sherry-turkle-wins-zocalos-sixth-annual-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/03/24/mits-sherry-turkle-wins-zocalos-sixth-annual-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/#respondThu, 24 Mar 2016 07:01:52 +0000zocalohttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/?p=71494Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, is the winner of the sixth annual Zócalo Book Prize, which is awarded to the author of the nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of community, human connectedness, and social cohesion.

Turkle argues persuasively that our era of smartphones, Facebook friendships, and constant text messaging has proved that E.M. Forster’s exhortation “Only connect!” is not enough. We are constantly in connection, yet we have forgotten how to talk to one another. As a result, we are losing our ability to empathize and love, and to be thoughtful students, innovative workers, and good citizens.

Our esteemed panel of judges lauded Reclaiming Conversation for both its style and substance. One judge wrote: “Brilliantly conversational, Turkle’s book maps the growth of our isolation and social alienation through device-dependence, and displays humane wisdom in showing us solutions to

]]>Sherry Turkle, author of Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, is the winner of the sixth annual Zócalo Book Prize, which is awarded to the author of the nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of community, human connectedness, and social cohesion.

Turkle argues persuasively that our era of smartphones, Facebook friendships, and constant text messaging has proved that E.M. Forster’s exhortation “Only connect!” is not enough. We are constantly in connection, yet we have forgotten how to talk to one another. As a result, we are losing our ability to empathize and love, and to be thoughtful students, innovative workers, and good citizens.

Our esteemed panel of judges lauded Reclaiming Conversation for both its style and substance. One judge wrote: “Brilliantly conversational, Turkle’s book maps the growth of our isolation and social alienation through device-dependence, and displays humane wisdom in showing us solutions to our era’s own silent spring, as gifted to us by communications technology. We need to rebuild our capacity for empathy, and the stakes for the quality of our social fabric couldn’t be higher.”

For more than a decade, Zócalo Public Square has been working to strengthen our social fabric by bringing people together around fundamental questions, and by recognizing, presenting, and publishing thinkers who investigate how, why, and where we connect. The Zócalo Book Prize, and our annual poetry prize, are critical components of this work, and are designed to encourage more writers to consider these questions.

Sherry Turkle has spent more than 30 years studying how our digital culture affects the ways we relate to one another. Trained as a sociologist and a licensed clinical psychologist, she is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé professor of the social studies of science and technology at MIT and is also the author of a number of other books, including Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other.

As the winner of the Zócalo Book Prize, Turkle will receive $5,000—and on Wednesday, May 11, she’ll deliver a lecture: “Why We Must Relearn the Art of Conversation” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown L.A. Please see more details on the award ceremony here.

We asked Turkle to tell us about the relationship between smartphones and empathy, where her book’s themes bear on the presidential election, and how all of us can relearn the art of conversation:

Q. How has the advent of the smartphone changed our human relationships with one another?

A. The smartphone, a technology that is always on and always-on-us, means that we are always tempted to be “elsewhere.” And we give in to this temptation. We divide our attention between the people we are with and all the people and places we can reach on our phones. Yet the mere presence of a phone in a conversation, even a phone turned off, means that conversation turns to more trivial matters, and we feel less connected to each other. So, not by design, our always-on world has led to an assault on empathy. But it is in conversation that empathy and intimacy are born and nurtured. To the failing connections of our digital world, conversation cures.

Q. But are there ways that we can use technology to have real conversations—and nurture our empathy and intimacy?

A. I personally think we need to begin with basics: the capacity to speak to each other face-to-face. That doesn’t mean that technology doesn’t have its place in maintaining long-distance relationships or putting us in contact with people and places that would otherwise be unknown to us. But consider this: After completing a study that showed that college students in the past 20 years showed a 40 percent decline in the markers by which we measure empathy, the lead researcher, depressed by her findings, turned to writing “empathy apps” for the iPhone. I think that this impulse to turn to technology to solve problems that technology has created can alienate us from our own experience. In my view, again, conversation cures. We are the empathy app.

Q. Do you see evidence of damage wrought by our flight from conversation in this divisive presidential election?

A. Yes. We bemoan the lack of civil discourse and debate and yet, for many election cycles, we have turned to sound bites and media-ready, simplified messages instead of debating issues in their complexity. Online we are tempted to ask questions that are simple enough to be answered in an email. We dumb down our questions because we expect answers to be available in a quick response or in a “search.” But the problems we face are complex and multifaceted. Conversation teaches a respect for the complex. It is needed now more than ever.

Q. One of the motifs in your book is a quotation from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden: “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” Technology, you explain, is also eroding our ability to be alone, to be bored. How does the solitude chair make us better at talking and being and working together?

A. The capacity for conversation begins with the capacity for solitude. When we can be alone, when we can gather ourselves, we are in a position to listen to other people, to hear them, to recognize them for who they are instead of relying on them to support our fragile sense of self. Thus, the capacity for mutuality, for relationship, begins with the capacity for solitude. Here, too, technology seems to have put us at risk. Studies show that people can feel near panic if they are left alone without their devices. In one experiment, after just six minutes sitting alone, college students begin to self-administer electroshocks rather than continue the experience of being alone with their thoughts. Reclaiming conversation begins with reclaiming solitude.

Q. So where do we start reclaiming and relearning conversation?

A. Put down your phone and begin a conversation. Create dedicated spaces in the kitchen, in the dining room, in the car, in designated areas in the workplace, that are device-free. At work, ban phones from meetings. To reclaim conversation, we have everything we need. We have each other.

Zócalo thanks this year’s panel of judges for their keen discernment: Harvard’s Allen; Pete Peterson, dean of Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy; Claudia Puig, a critic for KPCC’s FilmWeek segment and long-time film critic at USA Today; Zócalo’s publisher and founder Gregory Rodriguez; Jervey Tervalon, an award-winning novelist, poet, screenwriter, and dramatist; and Fernando Torres-Gil, a professor of social welfare and public policy at UCLA who directs the Center for Policy Research on Aging.

]]>http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2016/03/24/mits-sherry-turkle-wins-zocalos-sixth-annual-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/feed/0Announcing Zócalo’s Fourth Annual Poetry Prize Winnerhttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2015/06/08/announcing-zocalos-fourth-annual-poetry-prize-winner/inquiries/prizes/
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2015/06/08/announcing-zocalos-fourth-annual-poetry-prize-winner/inquiries/prizes/#respondMon, 08 Jun 2015 07:01:10 +0000zocaloadminhttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/?p=60870Zócalo, with its daily ideas journalism and free public events, aims to create a welcoming space for people and communities to tackle big questions, ideas, and issues. As our reach has expanded—we now syndicate to 185 media outlets around the world—so, too, has the range of subjects we explore. Every Friday, we publish a poem by an established or an emerging poet. And in every year since 2012, we’ve awarded the Zócalo Poetry Prize.

In conjunction with our annual book prize, we honor the writer of a poem that best evokes a connection to place. In 2012, Jody Zordrager won our inaugural prize for “Coming Back, It Comes Back,” a poem about returning home to Massachusetts; our 2013 prize went to Jia-Rui Cook—prior to her joining the Zócalo staff as editor—for “Fault,” a poem about the shifting ground on which Southern Californians live. Last year’s prize went to Amy Glynn

]]>Zócalo, with its daily ideas journalism and free public events, aims to create a welcoming space for people and communities to tackle big questions, ideas, and issues. As our reach has expanded—we now syndicate to 185 media outlets around the world—so, too, has the range of subjects we explore. Every Friday, we publish a poem by an established or an emerging poet. And in every year since 2012, we’ve awarded the Zócalo Poetry Prize.

In conjunction with our annual book prize, we honor the writer of a poem that best evokes a connection to place. In 2012, Jody Zordrager won our inaugural prize for “Coming Back, It Comes Back,” a poem about returning home to Massachusetts; our 2013 prize went to Jia-Rui Cook—prior to her joining the Zócalo staff as editor—for “Fault,” a poem about the shifting ground on which Southern Californians live. Last year’s prize went to Amy Glynn for “Shoreline,” about a place where we can sit back and watch the tide roll out and come in.

This year, 350 poets submitted about 700 poems to our contest. They brought us to all sorts of places: from the Bronx and Finland to what we imagine heaven is like.

Ultimately, Zócalo poetry editor Stephanie Brown and the Zócalo editorial staff chose to honor a poem about a place here in California. We’re delighted to award the $500 Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize to Gillian Wegener, who works on teacher training and curriculum development for the Oakdale Joint Unified School District and serves as the poet laureate of Modesto, Calif. Her winning poem about a small-town diner evokes the intimacy of its staff and regulars, and accepts the inevitability of change:

The Old Mill Café

Everyone knew where to sit.
Everyone knew what time the men from the dairy plant came in after the night shift.
Everyone knew when the all-night drunks would come looking for breakfast.
Everyone knew when Sandy’s girl ran away and why.
Everyone knew the size of the pancakes.
Everyone knew the windmill might really work, but then again, who could be sure.
Everyone knew when the junior college let out for summer.
Everyone knew when the talk was that the highway would be decommissioned.
Everyone knew when the hometown boy made good.
Everyone knew when the waitress was home sick and that she wasn’t sick at all.
Everyone knew and everyone commented when something wasn’t right.
Some folks commented with words and more words and some just noddedand some didn’t nod.
Everyone knew that team didn’t deserve to win that championship game.
Everyone knew the goddamned hippies weren’t welcome.
Everyone knew the smell of fresh coffee and the little clanks of the creamer lids.
Everyone left that stool empty for a long time after Charlie passed.
Everyone clutched their coffee cups when the train passed through—could havetouched the train as it squeezed by—the truth then, but not now.
Everyone heard about the accident and then everyone knew or thought they knew.
Everyone knew wind from the west meant a little rain.
No one knew what happened to that kid who used to bus tables.
Everyone knew when the price of almonds just about dropped through the floor.
Everyone knew the overpass was coming and that the Old Mill would be razed.
Everyone knew the café would reopen way down the street and no one was happyabout it.
Everyone knew they would keep going to the new place, which they dideven though it wasn’t the same—eggs tasted different, couldn’t put a finger on it.
Everyone knew that things don’t stay the same and there’s no use in whining aboutany of it.

Q. Was the “The Old Mill Café” inspired by an actual café—and, if so, where is it?

A. The Old Mill Café is in downtown Modesto. It had a certain kind of mystique. I actually never went inside—but I used to go past it all time. It was on the Old Highway 99.

When I wrote the poem, I was imagining its history over the course of time—how the same people went there day after day, year after year. It was close to a dairy, so I imagined shift workers going there—people who’ve been at the heart of Modesto as a town over the years.

[In 2001], the city built an overpass and knocked down the old restaurant. The Old Mill was moved down street and it doesn’t have a windmill anymore. It’s a regular old diner now, but the same people still go: farmers, ranchers, and the occasional person passing through.

Q. What’s been especially rewarding about being the poet laureate of Modesto?

A. So many community groups have asked me to write poems for their events. No one needs to include a poem in an event, but people feel that a poem gives a sense of gravity to a situation. I’ve been honored to meet that need.

The most challenging poem I’ve written was for the Community Hospice, for the dedication of the Children’s Memorial Garden. I was writing for families who’ve lost a child, so I wanted to honor their experience without assuming that I knew what they were feeling. Having that kind of trust from them was an honor. It was challenging to write and also meaningful, hopefully.

Q. What do you do when you’re not writing poetry?

A. I taught 8th grade English for 22 years. I’m out of the classroom now and working on curriculum and training teachers.

Q. What subject do you find yourself returning to?

A. Sense of place. I moved around a lot growing up and didn’t have a home place. I moved to Modesto and got a teaching job. At first, I wanted to teach and then move somewhere more exciting. Then this became my home, almost in spite of myself. I’m fascinated by how home gets created around us, even when we’re not looking for it.

Q. Which English-language poet do you find especially inspiring?

A. Lorine Niedecker. She has an amazing sense of place in her work, and an amazing sense of history. She’s my go-to poet when I’m stuck, when I feel like I’m caught in little bit of a rut and need to go in a new direction. Sometimes reading her work generates ideas that have nothing to do with what’s in her poems. It’s always a pleasure to read her work and see what happens.

]]>http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2015/06/08/announcing-zocalos-fourth-annual-poetry-prize-winner/inquiries/prizes/feed/0Danielle Allen Is the Winner of Our Fifth Annual Book Prizehttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2015/03/31/danielle-allen-is-the-winner-of-our-fifth-annual-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/
http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2015/03/31/danielle-allen-is-the-winner-of-our-fifth-annual-book-prize/inquiries/prizes/#respondTue, 31 Mar 2015 07:01:56 +0000zocalohttp://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/?p=59355Danielle Allen, author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, is the winner of the fifth annual Zócalo Book Prize. Allen’s insights into the significance of equality in America—from the 18th century to the present—make Our Declaration the 2014 nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of the forces that strengthen or undermine community and human connection.

The Zócalo Book Prize, which is awarded in conjunction with our annual poetry prize, furthers our mission to bring people together around ideas and to get us talking about how and why we connect, and what institutions and ideals, habits and mores, allow diverse groups to cohere. By recognizing an author whose work in this field we consider exemplary, we hope to encourage other thinkers and writers to delve into one of the most important issues of our time.

]]>Danielle Allen, author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, is the winner of the fifth annual Zócalo Book Prize. Allen’s insights into the significance of equality in America—from the 18th century to the present—make Our Declaration the 2014 nonfiction book that best enhances our understanding of the forces that strengthen or undermine community and human connection.

The Zócalo Book Prize, which is awarded in conjunction with our annual poetry prize, furthers our mission to bring people together around ideas and to get us talking about how and why we connect, and what institutions and ideals, habits and mores, allow diverse groups to cohere. By recognizing an author whose work in this field we consider exemplary, we hope to encourage other thinkers and writers to delve into one of the most important issues of our time.

Allen, a political philosopher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, joins a distinguished roster of past winners: MIT Center for Civic Media director Ethan Zuckerman, New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, London School of Economics and New York University sociologist Richard Sennett, and journalist Peter Lovenheim.

Each of our winners has viewed connection and community from a different lens. In her close reading of the Declaration of Independence, Allen asserts that the document’s primary argument is not merely about the importance of freedom, but of equality, too. Contemporary political discourse has largely cast this ideal aside, in favor of defending individual rights above all.

“Such a choice is dangerous,” writes Allen in the prologue to Our Declaration. “If we abandon equality, we lose the single bond that makes us a community, that makes us a people with the capacity to be free collectively and individually in the first place.” Our Declaration explores the importance Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries placed on equality and community, and how, in just 1,337 words, they forged a document with the power to build a cohesive and united nation.

As the winner of the Zócalo Book Prize, Allen will receive $5,000—and on Friday, April 24, she’ll deliver a lecture: “Can Democracy Exist Without Equality?” at MOCA Grand Avenue. Please see more details on the award ceremony here.

We asked Allen a few questions about the themes of Our Declaration, and the state of equality and community in America today:

Q. How does our belief in equality bind Americans together?

A. Equality is fundamental to forming the social bond of democracy. If we don’t achieve equality among us, you see the citizenry—the people of the country—split up into factions. You need equality just to build a basis for solving hard problems together. Our commitment to equality has weakened considerably for the past few decades, which is one of the causes of greater social strife and tension in America today.

Q. How can the Declaration of Independence help us deal with questions and issues surrounding a lack of equality in America right now?

A. The Declaration makes a really powerful argument for why we all have a right to participate in politics and contribute to our collective decisions. It sets a really high bar for what a democracy needs to achieve. A democracy needs to give people equality as well as access to government as a tool we can use collectively to ensure our safety and happiness. The Declaration can educate us about how to think about our aspirations for equality. Our muscles for thinking about liberty are incredibly strong; ideas about freedom trip off our tongues. We no longer have ideas that trip off our tongues about equality. I’m trying to rebuild and revive a basic understanding of why equality matters and what it consists of.

Q. If equality and freedom aren’t in opposition, what is a more productive way of viewing their relationship?

A. Any time somebody evokes the concept equality, you have to ask them to define it. Are you talking about political equality, social equality, economics, moral equality? Equality and freedom always have belonged together. You can’t have freedom unless everybody is free, and you can only have that if nobody is dominating everyone else. If some people are free and dominating others, you don’t have freedom, because the people who are dominated are not free.

Economic issues are a lot harder to think about than they were in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, before industrialization hit. In the wake of industrialization, we’ve lost sight of how to think about equality and economic issues. You can resolve a lot of questions about economic inequality by asking what economic policies do the most to achieve political equality among the citizenry.

Q. What line or lines from the Declaration of Independence do you wish today’s politicians would read more closely or consider more thoughtfully?

A. For me it’s not just about politicians. It’s about all of us. The line I wish all citizens—all members of our polity, including politicians—would consider more carefully, is the concluding clause of the famous second sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident … That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

The message is that every generation has a responsibility to consider how our government is working for us. Are our institutions and principles securing our safety and happiness? If not, how can we fix them?

Q. What would the Founding Fathers think about the state of community in America today?

A. I think they’d be really dismayed. One of the things that characterized the revolutionary period was a real openness of participation at all social levels in thinking about public questions. So, for example, as the Founders were trying to figure out what they thought was wrong with King George’s administration, from Georgia to Massachusetts, they had to put posters up saying, “Everybody meet in Farmer Smith’s field on Sunday to talk about what your view is and what you think is wrong.” There was a really strong participatory element in those early revolutionary days which we’ve walked away from, and which I hope we can recover.